Almost seven months after restarting operations in the wake of a $230-million cyberattack, crypto exchange WazirX has rolled out futures trading in a bid to boost user engagement and reclaim lost market share.
Starting May 13, the exchange will initially offer futures trading in 36 tokens with leverage of up to 10X, which could eventually be scaled to 100X, founder Nischal Shetty told Moneycontrol.
WazirX said it will charge a maker fee of 0.02% and a taker fee of 0.04%, which it claims is the lowest among Indian crypto exchanges without any volume threshold requirement. The platform will also allow users to trade futures directly in INR without converting funds into USDT before opening positions.
According to Shetty, users can begin futures trading with margins of around Rs 1,000–2,000.
Calling the launch one of the company's biggest initiatives since relaunching, Shetty said futures trading could eventually contribute nearly 50% of WazirX's revenues.
“This is the biggest initiative we are taking after relaunch, apart from the zero-fee trading that we brought in for spot. In our rebuild phase, we are looking at how do we get back our customers who used to trade on spot, but have now moved to futures on other platforms,” Shetty told Moneycontrol.
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He said India's 1% TDS on crypto transactions and the 30% virtual digital asset tax have severely impacted spot trading volumes, pushing retail traders toward futures.
WazirX currently records daily trading volumes of around $0.5 million to $1 million, significantly lower than its earlier market dominance before the July 2024 cyberattack in which the exchange lost nearly $234 million worth of crypto assets.
The company has also begun testing an AI-powered trading assistant named “Clawman”, which analyses charts and simulates trades through paper trading.
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